“With nations hamstrung from competing, this would inevitably lead to private companies holding power over national governments. This situation has emboldened a group of artists to trump everyone and claim the moon for themselves.”

“She had lost leases before during her long life in independent theater. This time was different. ‘I was crying, screaming,’ she said, about leaving her neighborhood. ‘They had to carry me to the car.'”

“‘It’s becoming quite apparent to us that the world of playing the perfect music to people and the world of playing perfect advertising to them are strikingly similar,’ says Eric Bieschke, Pandora’s chief scientist.”

“While artists performing others’ songs is as old as pop and rock itself, over the past couple of decades the faithful reinterpretation of earlier groups’ repertoires, looks and quirks, even appropriately-accented onstage chat, has become big business and a process whereby the greats of the past are presented to new generations of fans.”

“Much of the 1920 book is centered on Mary Jones’s remarkable row of stone houses on Fifth Avenue, from 57th to 58th Street. But almost absent from Wharton’s writings is Mary’s sister Rebecca Jones, who built an equally impressive row just two blocks south.”

“In 1968, Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art bought a painting called LOVE — and made artist Robert Indiana famous. It became a sculpture, a stamp, greeting cards. And it obliterated the rest of Indiana’s career. The artist has been pretty much ignored by the art world for the past few decades.”

“There are 240 members in the Academy’s music branch, which includes Mr. Burnett, and if those members come to view ‘Llewyn Davis’ as a tribute to the enduring power of their own craft, the film will be well on its way.”

“Joel and Ethan Coen’s darkly comic odyssey set against the 1960s New York folk-music scene swept the National Society of Film Critics’ top prizes on Saturday, winning awards for picture, director, actor Oscar Isaac and cinematography.”

“It’s not a reconstruction of one particular theatre – it’s an archetype of the kind of indoor spaces in which the late romances of Shakespeare, the dark revenge plays of John Webster and the satirical city comedies of Ben Jonson would have been performed.”

“They include excoriating cinematic treatments of Indonesian death squads, evangelical homophobia in Uganda, the uprising in Tahrir Square and an attack on the incarceration of orca whales in marine parks” – and an already-banned-in-Moscow doco about Pussy Riot.

“Product updates were few and far between. Given that Google can hire lots of people to do just about anything, the steady-state of Scholar gave me the idea that perhaps Google was going to sunset the service.”

Dramaturgs “do anything from mundane script management to researching a play’s historical background, from suggesting changes in a play’s structure to arranging post-show discussions with the audience.”

“In ads, stump speeches and other messages understood to have manipulative intent, three claims will persuade, but four (or more) will trigger skepticism, and reverse an initially positive impression.”

“There is no more beautiful sound than the voices of siblings swirled together in high harmony, and when Phil and Don Everly combined their voices with songs about yearning, angst and loss, it changed the world.”

“Web comics have been around since the early days of the internet, but the combination of universal broadband, image-friendly blogging platforms and the marketing power of social media has seen their popularity explode in recent years.”

“In 2013, he had no fewer than seven world premieres in five cities on three continents. It becomes increasingly evident that he is the most prolific choreographer alive, the most travel-hungry and the most historically conscious.”

“Olympic ice dancing also now carries the reality-television, celebrity-culture appeal of shows like ‘Dancing With the Stars’ and ‘So You Think You Can Dance,’ programs that have turned the salsa, tango and fox trot into somewhat quantifiable competitions.”

Minnesota Orchestra musicians have been locked out of Orchestra Hall for more than a year – but “under the terms of its lease, the [Minnesota Orchestral Association] is required to show how the facility is being used to promote the arts in Minneapolis.” Hm.

Zaentz was a “fiesty music industry executive turned independent movie producer who won three best-picture Academy Awards in three different decades” – for One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus, and The English Patient.

These episodes of the original Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation “may have allowed viewers to reconsider knee-jerk and intolerant positions on sexual difference; as we see the pain caused by intolerance, we have a chance to rethink our positions.”

“Why aren’t more high schools producing David Mamet plays, or Neil LaBute, Yasmina Reza, John Logan, or Rajiv Joseph, and thereby exposing the students and the school community to new works? Because they’re too busy with Beauty and the Beast, Seussical, and The Wizard of Oz.”